Traditionally, purchasing real estate requires prospective buyers and sellers to transact through a real estate professional—typically a licensed individual or entity such as a licensed real estate agent, broker, or realtor—referred hereinafter simply as “realtor”. With an ever growing real estate industry, the number of realtors has similarly increased. As such, realtors are finding that keeping a competitive edge against the tremendous number of licensed individuals or entities is increasingly difficult.
Realtors interested in pursuing business opportunities in the real estate industry face numerous challenges. With more professionals available in a particular area, prospective buyers and prospective sellers may choose from a plethora of available licensed professional to help them with real estate transactions. Moreover, the World Wide Web has made the largest real estate companies and the more independent licensed individuals, seemingly equally accessible. Hence, there is a growing need for maintaining a competitive edge in the real estate industry.
One of the challenges that realtors face is the procurement of new prospects and new business opportunities or leads. While the Internet may make a realtor's contact information widely available to the public, receiving quality leads typically means having to spend considerable resources sifting through requests with low or no potential of turning into a successful transaction. Similarly, the vast number of competing realtors and flood of advertising information makes branding increasingly difficult. Furthermore, even where a good referral system is implemented, turning those referrals into successful transactions and turning current business into repeat business remains a challenge.
Therefore, there are several challenges with the current state of the real estate industry that have not been adequately addressed by the prior art. These challenges persist because a need to provide a system and method for facilitating real estate transactions has not been adequately met. As such, a new and improved system that facilitates transacting business opportunities in the real estate industry is desirable, and it is to these ends that the present invention has been developed.